WhereIsAtlas · Cloud software

Salesforce

The company that turned software into a utility — and invented the cloud subscription model

Active — From a San Francisco apartment in 1999 to a Dow Jones member whose software runs customer relationships for a large share of the Fortune 500 — and an AI pivot in the 2020s.

Salesforce was founded in March 1999 by Marc Benioff, a former Oracle senior vice president who left the company after a life-changing sabbatical. Inspired by consumer websites like Amazon.com, Benioff asked why business software could not simply be delivered over the internet — hosted, always-on, and paid for by subscription — instead of bought on CD-ROMs and installed over months. The result was a "no-software" platform delivered from the cloud.

Starting with three co-founders in a one-bedroom apartment at 1449 Montgomery Street in San Francisco, Salesforce grew into the defining company of the cloud-computing era. Its subscription model, in which customers paid per user rather than for a big up-front license, upended the traditional enterprise-software business that rivals like Siebel Systems dominated. Salesforce positioned itself as a guerrilla underdog, running mock protests outside a competing conference and renting taxis to pitch executives on the way to a competing event.

After nearly going under in the dot-com crash of 2001, Salesforce restructured its billing to annual contracts, stabilized its cash flow, and went public on the New York Stock Exchange in June 2004 under the ticker CRM — the stock rising 56% on its first day. It broke $1 billion in annual revenue by 2009, and continued to expand far beyond CRM, buying Tableau and Slack to broaden its platform. In 2020 it joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average, cementing its place among America's most valuable companies.

Quick facts

Founded
March 1999, San Francisco
Founder
Marc Benioff
Model
Subscription "cloud" software
IPO
NYSE, June 2004 (ticker CRM, +56%)
First $1B revenue
2009
Big acquisitions
Tableau, Slack
Joined Dow Jones
2020

Sources

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